I have loved just about everything Ken Follett has written, but I think this one fell short of his usual standard. Most of his novels grab you from the beginning, with fully-drawn characters and gripping plot lines. I wasn't even done with the second chapter before I began to wonder if I was even going to like this. I think he may have tried to accomplish too much with this story. There were so many characters with so much going on in their lives. There was not enough time to give more than a glimpse of each character's personality and motives, even though the novel was almost a 1,000 pages long. I will grant that quite a lot of research had to have gone into it before the writing. However, the political details read more like a history book and made it very hard to dredge though.

One part that did make me chuckle was when one of the characters had a chance to view a chapel that was built around 1000 AD. He couldn't figure out why other people were so enchanted with old churches. Remembering "Pillars of the Earth", which might be argued as Follett's greatest novel, I think that was a little "tongue-in-cheek".

This is the first book of a planned triology and I probably will read the others. I will wait until they come out in paperback, though. This novel didn't leave me breathlessly waiting for the next.